Robert D. Hunt received his degrees from colleges in the State of Mississippi. Mr. Hunt began his design and engineering career in 1969 as a New Nuclear designer for Newport News Shipbuilding Company where he designed nuclear reactor components for the U.S.S. Nimitz, the first of its class of nuclear powered aircraft carriers that has since been the U.S. model for nuclear carriers.

Mr. Hunt became a private inventor during the mid-1980s while involved in the field of aquaculture. His firm the Redfish Hatchery was the first commercial company to successfully spawn redfish. He invented and patented a cryogenic liquid oxygen system for the company that pumps water via gas-lift using pure oxygen gas (instead of using air that is predominately nitrogen that is toxic to fish in concentration) that simultaneously supersaturates oxygen into the water to support high-density fish culture which removing unwanted nitrogen toxicity. This was Mr. Hunt’s first patent in 1986; and, his oxygen-lift system has become the standard of the aquaculture industry today and is used worldwide by fish farmers and public aquariums.

Mr. Hunt began work on ways and devices to harness the kinetic energy of natural gas wells in 1998; and, early attempts at trying to modify hydro-turbines were unsuccessful because they failed under the harsh oil field conditions of extreme pressure, temperature, and corrosive materials. Not giving up he began development of his long-stroke free-piston engine as a means to produce power from high pressure resources using positive displacement that has recently been successful in field tests. His free piston engine have no crankshaft, which led to further development of a revolutionary new Sprague gear transmission that converts back-and-forth reciprocating motion into rotation in a single direction.

Starting with the new millennia, Mr. Hunt has dedicated his full-time effort to the development of his proprietary alternative, clean-energy generating technologies with a primary focus on low-temperature power generation. He has filed patents in every field of renewable energy on many novel device designs that improve the renewable energy industry. Further, he has established several leading renewable energy related companies as their principal founder including;

• Linear Power, Ltd. designer and manufacturer of the free piston engine. www.freepistonengine.net
• RenewableOne a franchised real estate development corporation that integrates Renewables into the built environment that converts building envelopes into power plants with a unique series of innovations including; a solar building material, building installed wind power generation equipment that cannot be seen as it uses the building’s exterior to direct wind in the wind harnessing equipment in an original and innovative manner, and the use of geothermal power via ultra-low temperature unique power cycles. www.renewableone.com
• Pyramid Solar Renewables markets an innovative solar building material that incorporates both solar thermal power and PV power into a single material that possess structural strength from which roofs and walls may be constructed that holds vast potential to change the building industry. www.pyramidsolarrenewables.com
• Kinetic E a company incorporated to produce compressed air powered vehicles using the free piston engine of Mr. Hunt’s design.
• Hunt Aviation promotes the future development of a revolutionary aircraft powered by the heat energy in the air at low altitude that is used to boil a heavy liquid into a lighter-than-air lifting gas in order to allow the airplane to rise to high altitude like a helium balloon. Heat rejection to complete the batch power cycle is performed at high altitude in cold air where that allows the lifting-gas to be condensed back to the heavy liquid at which time the aircraft becomes a glider sailing back downward towards earth. Then at low altitude hot atmospheric air is used to again boil the liquid to a lifting-gas and the process may be repeated indefinitely to fly in a sin wave flight pattern as long as desired. The intellectual property that makes this invention possible is the novel chemical formula for the lifting-gas that can be made into a liquid under the stated conditions that he has not yet publically disclosed. www.fuellessflight.com

Currently, Mr. Hunt is in the process of forming Marine Renewable Energy that is a new company created to take advantage of his weighted wave energy invention that works by gaining additional power from the acceleration of gravity as the weighted buoy drops creating a beneficial downward pull after being lifted by a wave and then moves both upward and forward somewhat in the manner of a surfer in response to a wave thereby utilizing gravity and improved vector angles in order to harness the power of waves much more efficiently. Other hydro-kinetic energy devices of his invention that use the energy of moving water will also be licensed to the company. Marine Renewable Energy plans to be involved in harnessing offshore wind power using a new low profile dual-axis wind turbine of Mr. Hunt’s invention, underwater geothermal that accomplishes heat rejection to deep cold water which is a process first patented by Mr. Hunt, offshore oil and gas / geothermal co-production activities, and potentially the production of hydrogen from these power sources that may be located in stranded sites, such as offshore drilling platforms that the company plans to utilize in its activities.

Mr. Hunt’s work has advanced the understanding of how gravity can beneficially be used to aide in the generation of power as it does in natural world. His technical paper titled, “Evaluation of the Effect of Gravity on the Total-Flow Geothermal Cycle”, written in June of 2010 to be published by the Geothermal Resources Council in October 2010 provides mathematical proof that thermal energy can be used to initiate a process that by its unique working then gains substantial additional power as an effect of gravity. This is the only thermal power cycle known that gains power directly as a result of the gravitational attraction of the earth. It is estimated that it is destined to be a tremendous advancement in the generation of geothermal power worldwide, especially low-temperature geothermal as it has the capacity to double the power output of geothermal power from a given thermal resource!

The above technology can also be applied to the solar industry with major impact on solar thermal power generation as the process can be applied to that industry using a sealed-off from the earth vertical insulated, closed-loop U-shaped tube installed to reasonable depth within the earth by drilling techniques into which the water heated by the solar thermal energy may be re-circulated in order to take advantage of the effect of gravity on the total flow gas-lift cycle.

A video of Mr. Hunt’s Ted Talk in Austin, Texas on February 20, 2010 that may be viewed at www.tedxaustin.com/bob-hunt provides an explanation of how he came to understand that in nature thermodynamics and gravity often work together to generate much more power than if thermodynamics were used alone. He realized that our planet could not function without this interaction between thermodynamics and gravity as there would be no rain falling from the heavens, no running streams having tremendous kinetic power, and no hydroelectric power generation from rain water stored behind dams and many other common features of our lives that are aided by the effect of gravity on our planet.

Mr. Hunt has acted as a consultant to the Abell Foundation that owns Sea Solar Power International in regard to intellectual property development for ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) that produces power from warm sea water in latitudes near the equator. He has successfully applied his low-temperature geothermal to the industry, currently holding the world’s record for low-temperature power generation as a result thereof.

Mr. Hunt is considered one of the leading authorities in low temperature power generation. He was a presenter at the SMU oil and gas conference in Dallas, Texas where he first presented his novel free piston engine concept and total flow gas-lift power cycle to the fledgling oil and gas / geothermal co-production industry.

His novel aircraft that flies using the heat energy stored in the air was presented to the American Association of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) in a paper titled, “Flight Powered by an Atmospheric Power Cycle” with very positive response from his peers.

Mr. Hunt recently submitted an idea to BP for a “magnetic top kill process” that would use the attraction of a powerful magnetic field to direct ferrous metal metallic solids to the holes in the well’s casing in order to plug the leak sufficiently to be able to pump mud into the well to stop the leak of the damaged Deep Horizon Well in the Gulf of Mexico that unfortunately was not used; otherwise, the leak may have been stopped early on during the original top kill process many months sooner than it was successfully capped preventing a lot of the damage that occurred in the interim.

Mr. Hunt continues his work in the advancement of renewable energy and is very active making speeches and presentations at industry venues across the country to date. He is a member of and is active in numerous scientific and technical organizations.